, 2010). A study modelling the benefits of Barcelona’s scheme identified likely health and environmental benefits, but did not consider equity impacts (Rojas-Rueda et al., 2011), while an evaluation of Montreal’s scheme found that users were more likely to be young,

well-educated, current cyclists (Fuller et al., 2011). An online customer satisfaction survey of 1297 BCH scheme users, found an overrepresentation of young, white, high-earning men (Transport for London,2010d), however its validity was limited by a 5% response rate (personal communication, 2011). This study uses complete registration data from the first seven months of the BCH scheme to compare the personal and area-level characteristics of users with those of the general population, and to examine the predictors of scheme usage.

Transport for London provided anonymised registration data for all users who registered click here between 30th July 2010 and 23rd February 2011 (the most recent data then available). Registration data comprised each individual’s title; date of registration; initial access type (1-day, 7-day or annual); and postcode of registration debit or credit card. Registration data was linked to the total number of BCH trips made prior to 18th March 2011. Our dataset did not include data on pay-as-you-go ‘casual’ users who, since 3rd December, have been able to use the BCH without registering. We used titles to assign gender as ‘male’, ‘female’, or ‘ambiguous’. As proxies for individual-level data, we used postcodes to assign deprivation, PLX4032 mouse ethnicity Sclareol and mode of commute data at the level of the Lower Super Output Area (LSOA, mean population 1500). We assigned small-area income deprivation using the 2010 English Indices of Deprivation (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2011), and assigned the proportions of ‘non-White British residents’ and ‘adult commuters who normally commute by bicycle’ using the 2001 census (Office for National Statistics, 2001). We used postcode centroids to generate distance to the nearest BCH docking station, and to calculate the number of docking stations within 250 m. Our primary measure of BCH usage was ‘mean number of trips per month

of registration’ among individuals who registered for the scheme, with the denominator calculated to include fractions of months. As a secondary outcome we examined whether registering individuals ever used the scheme. Individuals with missing data for any variable (1.2%) were excluded from analyses. We compared personal and area-level characteristics of registered users with area-level characteristics of two populations: a) residents of Greater London and b) all residents and workers in the BCH ‘Zone’. We defined this Zone as all LSOAs where part or all of the LSOA is within 500 m of a BCH docking station, and identified the home postcodes of workers in this Zone using CommuterFlows data from the 2001 census (Office for National Statistics, 2008).